Balkan War Crimes: Bosnia Is First to Turn In Its Own

By CHRIS HEDGES

Published: May 3, 1996

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 2—
The Bosnian Government has detained two Muslims who were indicted by the international war crimes tribunal for the murder of Serbian prisoners, the first time any of the republics from the former Yugoslavia have honored arrest warrants from the special court in the Hague.

The two men, Hazim Delic and Esad Landzo, were indicted by the tribunal for crimes allegedly committed at the Celebici prison camp in 1992, near the central Bosnian town of Konjic. Bosnian Government officials said the men, in custody in Sarajevo, would be handed over to the tribunal within a few days.

The arrest of the men, which contrasts with the unkept promises of cooperation with the tribunal on the part of Serbia and Croatia, followed an indictment by the court on March 22 against three Bosnian Muslims and a Bosnian Croat. The four men were charged with beating and torturing about 30 Serbian detainees at the camp to death.

The three Muslims were the first Muslims to be indicted by the tribunal. The indictment was also the first time the court charged Muslims or Croats with crimes mainly aimed against Bosnian Serbs. Altogether, the tribunal has indicted 57 suspects -- 46 Serbs, 8 Croats and 3 Muslims.

The Celebici camp was run by Muslim and Croat forces in Konjic who were then allied in the fight against the Serbs. The roughly 200 men held in the camp, a base that once belonged to the old Yugoslav Army, were local Serbs who had been rounded up and disarmed. Many were elderly or infirm.

The Serbs in 1991 made up 15 percent of the 43,636 residents in the Konjic municipality.

The prisoners were held in two warehouses, as well as a narrow, dank underground atomic bunker called "the tunnel."

Serbian survivors said Muslim soldiers entered the base at night and beat prisoners with clubs, rifle butts, wooden planks, shovels and pieces of cable. At times the Muslim troops put gas masks over the faces of the victims to muffle their screams, eyewitnesses said. Some of the Muslim troops wore hoods while carrying out the beatings, former prisoners said.

"If you had said something bad to one of them before the war or had done something to him, you had to pay for it now," said a Serb who was in the camp and who asked to remain unidentified.

The prisoners, according to human rights investigators, were fed bread and water. They sometimes went for one or two days without food, rarely bathed and slept on the concrete floors without blankets. Many were forced to defecate on the floor.

Investigators say that in May and August about 30 prisoners died from "bestial" beatings. A few others, they said, were shot or stabbed to death by the Muslim troops. Several victims were elderly, these investigators said.

The tribunal's indictment says the Celebici camp was shut down in the autumn of 1992. Most of the surviving prisoners were released in prisoner-of-war exchanges.

Zejnil Delalic, the former commander of the Bosnian forces in Konjic, who was also indicted, was arrested in Munich in March. He has been charged with overall responsibility for the war crimes at Celebici. Germany is expected to hand him over to the tribunal soon.

Zdrakvo Mucic, the ethnic Croat who was the camp's commander and who was listed in the March indictment as responsible for 14 murders, was arrested in Vienna. He was handed over to the tribunal on April 9.

Mr. Delic, a deputy to Mr. Mucic, has been charged with four murders and Mr. Landzo, a camp guard, with five murders.

Serbs who gave testimony to the court said Mr. Delic and Mr. Landzo carried out several savage beatings, along with a guard whose nickname was "Focak" -- "the man from Foca," a town in eastern Bosnia. They describe scenes where the men dumped gasoline on prisoners and lit them on fire, as well as one incident when two brothers were forced to perform sexual acts on each other.

Mr. Delic, the deputy who oversaw the daily operations of the camp, escorted Muslim soldiers in to carry out the nightly beatings, often suggesting potential victims, former prisoners said. Mr. Delic has also been charged in the gang-rape of two Serbian women.

The tribunal's indictment states that Mr. Landzo, who was only 17 or 18 at the time, and Mr. Delic, brutally beat an elderly Serb, Scepo Gotovac and then nailed a badge from the ruling Muslim Party for Democratic Action to his forehead. Mr. Gotovac died soon afterwards from his injuries, the indictment said.

The tribunal currently holds three of those accused of war crimes at its detention center in The Hague -- a Bosnian Serb paramilitary, Dusan Tadic, and two Bosnian Croats, Gen. Tihomir Blaskic and Mr. Mucic.

In the Dayton peace accords, Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia all pledged cooperation with the international tribunal.

General Blaskic was never arrested by the Croatian authorities, although he went to the Hague voluntarily, at the encouragement of the Croatian Government, which pledged support for his defense. Other ethnic Croats who have been charged by the tribunal have not been arrested by either the Zagreb Government or Croatian authorities in Bosnia.

While Belgrade, which represented the Bosnian Serbs in peace talks, has promised to cooperate, it has so far failed to arrest any of the indicted Serbs. Bosnian Serb authorities, led by Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, both of whom have been indicted by the Hague, say they do not recognize the court's jurisdiction.

Mr. Tadic's trial, the tribunal's first, is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.